U gur Sahin is a Turkish-German physician, scientist, and entrepreneur who is the co-founder and CEO of the biotechnology company BioNTech. Born in Turkey, he moved to Germany as a child. A dedicated cancer researcher, he and his wife, the immunologist Özlem Türeci, have dedicated their careers to pioneering novel immunotherapies to fight cancer. They co-founded their first company, Ganymed Pharmaceuticals, which they sold for a large sum. In 2008, they co-founded BioNTech to focus on developing personalized cancer treatments based on messenger RNA (mRNA) technology.

While their cancer research was ongoing, their mRNA platform was uniquely positioned to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. In early 2020, Sahin led his company to pivot its research to develop a vaccine. In partnership with the American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, BioNTech designed, developed, and brought to market one of the world's first and most effective mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines in record time. The massive global success of the vaccine transformed BioNTech into a multi-billion dollar company almost overnight and turned Sahin and his wife into global heroes and multi-billionaires.